The Butterfly House opens with a bang

Cumberland House Natural History Museum has welcomed not just a whole host of new butterflies, but also a great many new visitors, too.

Since opening just one month ago, the Butterfly House has welcomed thousands of new visitors to the Natural History Museum. In the month that followed, more than 13,000 people headed through the doors - a 79% increase on the previous year's figures, when the Butterfly House was closed. This total was also thousands more than the figure for 2015, when the old Butterfly House was open.

Not only have visitors enjoyed the Butterfly House experience, so too have the museum's new inhabitants. Shortly after becoming established in the new greenhouse, the butterflies began mating, and small eggs can now be seen on some of the the plants. These will eventually grow into caterpillars, then pupae, then butterflies. As the conditions are ideal within The Butterfly House, and staff work hard to keep predators out, it's likely that a great many more will survive the whole process than would have in the wild.